Within the WW-Medatlas project, sponsored by the Italian, French and GreekNavies, an extensive atlas of the wind and wave conditions in theMediterranean Sea has been completed. The atlas is based on the informationderived from the archive of the European Centre for Medium-Range WeatherForecasts, UK, then calibrated on the base of the data available from theERS1-2 and Topex satellites. The calibration is required because the wind,hence the wave, data are normally strongly underestimated in the enclosedseas. The calibration has been done deriving the model values at eachsatellite position, typically at 7 km intervals. The co-located values havethen been assigned to the closest grid point. This has provided a substantialnumber of couples of data at each point, then used to derive, by best-fittingtechnique, the correction required. This turns out to vary amply throughoutthe basin, according to the local geometry and orography. The calibrationcoefficients, different for wind and waves, have been used to correct theoriginal fields and the time series at the single points. Using thecalibrated data, extensive statistics have been derived, both as fields andat each point, including extreme values.
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